Pharmaceutical industry in the United Kingdom

The pharmaceutical industry in the United Kingdom directly employs around 73,000 people and in 2007 contributed £8.4 billion to the UK's GDP and invested a total of £3.9 billion in research and development. In 2007 exports of pharmaceutical products from the UK totalled £14.6 billion, creating a trade surplus in pharmaceutical products of £4.3 billion.

UK Pharmaceutical employment of 73,000 in 2017 compares to 114,000 as of 2015 in Germany, 92,000 as of 2014 in France and 723,000 in the European Union as a whole. In the United States 281,440 people worked in the pharmaceutical industry as of 2016.

The UK is home to GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, respectively the world's fifth- and sixth-largest pharmaceutical companies measured by 2009 market share. It is also home to the multinational Hikma Pharmaceuticals. Foreign companies with a major presence in the UK pharmaceutical industry include Pfizer, Novartis, Hoffmann–La Roche and Eisai. One in five of the world's biggest-selling prescription drugs were developed in the UK.